Fletch’s Fortune

Sixteen

From TAPE

Station 22

Room 42 (Leona Hatch)

“Ready for lunch?”

“Just putting on my hat.”

“Why do you need a hat? We’re not leaving the building.”

“If your hair were as thin as mine, Nettie.…”

“I’d never leave the house,” Nettie Horn said. “You feel you must have a trademark, Leona. As if anybody cared.”

“I like wearing a hat.”

“With your vanity, I just don’t understand how you let yourself get so drunk.”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t make it to dinner last night, Leona.”

“You did?”

“I did.”

“And what happened to you after dinner, Nettie?”

“I’m not perfectly sure. I seem to remember singing around a piano.…”

“Nettie, I put myself to bed in a proper manner last night. I even folded my clothes and removed my corset and got under the covers. In fact, I totally unraveled my corset. That took great concentration and deliberation—although why I felt I had to do it, I don’t know. Had a dickens of a time putting it all together again this morning. Where did you sleep last night?”

“I woke up in a chair in my room.”

“Fully dressed?”

“Well.…”

“I know you, Nettie. Somebody just dumped you there. Probably a bellman. Well, I was in my bed with my corset off. Now, don’t give me any more of your nonsense about my being drunk in public.…”

Fletch switched off the marvelous machine to answer his phone.

“Fletcher, old buddy, old friend!”

“Don?”

“Yes, sir, I’m here.”

“If this is Don Gibbs, I thought we established when I called you from Washington that we are not buddies, not friends, but, at the most, useless acquaintances.”

“How can you say that? Come on. Didn’t we learn the Northwestern fight song together?”

“I never learned beyond the first verse.”

“What could be verse?” Don Gibbs said.

“Learning the second verse. Golly, Don, you sound full of bonhomie.”

“Does that taste anything like Wild Turkey bourbon?”

“You government guys drink good stuff.”

“Seldom do I personally get the opportunity to squeeze the taxpayer’s wallet. How goes the convention?”

“If I ask where you are will I get an answer?”

“Try it and see.”

“Where are you, Don?”

“Here.”

“Terrific. Can you be a little more precise as to where ‘here’ is, geographically, at the moment?”

“Hendricks Plantation. Hendricks, Virginia. U. S. of A.”

“Here?”

“You’ve got it.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Thought we’d come along to see how you’re doing.”

“‘We’?”

“Bob is with me.”

“Who’s Bob?”

“Bob Englehardt, my honored and beloved department head.”

“What are you doing here?”

“This Walter March murder, Fletch. It sort of worries us.”

“Why should it? What’s the C.I.A. got to do with it? The murder of a private citizen within the United States is a purely domestic matter.”

“March Newspapers has foreign bureaus, hasn’t it?”

“Boy, you guys have elastic minds.”

“By the way, how much poop have you got on the murder?”

“I’ve got it solved.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Out with it.”

“No.”

“Wait a minute, Fletch. Bob wants to speak to you. I’ll come back on the line.”

“Mister Fletcher?” Robert Englehardt was trying to lighten his ponderous tone. “May I call you Fletch?”

“I don’t know why you call me at all.”

“Well, to answer that question, we need you to cover for us. Don has been calling your room since we arrived, so you wouldn’t express surprise at seeing us at the various functions here at the hotel and blurt out our actual employer.”

“I was playing tennis with What’s-her-name.”

“Who? What is her name?”

“Exactly.”

“Fletch, we’re here as observers from the Canadian press.”

“Anyone in Canada know that?”

“No. Our official story is that we’re thinking of setting up a similar convention, next year, in Ontario. Naturally, we expect you to allow no one here, now or ever, to know whom we actually represent.”

“Why in hell should I cover for you guys?”

“For all of the above reasons.”

“Again?”

“Failure to file federal tax returns, evasion of federal taxes, deporting United States currency illegally.…”

“I’ve always heard it’s more difficult to keep a fortune than to make one.”

“Then we have your complete cooperation?”

“How could you think otherwise?”

Robert Englehardt said, “Good. Here’s Don.”

After a pause in which the clink of an ice cube against a glass was audible, Don Gibbs said, “Fletch?”

“Gee, Don. Your superior didn’t say he was looking forward to meeting me.”

“Actually, Fletch,” Don said, “he’s not.”

“Gee, Don.”

“How’s the taping going? Got much dirt yet?”

“It’s a marvelous machine. Very sensitive.”

“What do you have so far? Anything good?”

“Mostly toilets flushing, showers running, typewriters clacking, and a lot of journalists talking to themselves in their rooms. I never realized journalists are such lonely people.”

“That all?”

“No, I also have a complete tape of the New World Symphony from somebody’s radio.”

“You must have more than that.”

“People snoring, coughing, sneezing.…”

“Okay, Fletch. Expect we’ll see you around.”

“Never saw you before in my life. By the way, Don, what room are you in?”

“Suite 3. They had to give us the suite in which Walter March was murdered. They didn’t have any other place to put us.”

“Really living it up, uh?”

“The rule book says we can take a suite if nothing else is available.”

“I’m glad I’m not a taxpayer,” Fletch said. “Bye.”

Fletch switched his marvelous machine to Station 5—Suite 3.

“… Turkey in school,” Don Gibbs was saying. “Always out doing his own thing.”

“More?” Robert Englehardt said.

“No one could ever figure out what it was. Gone night after night. Never came to the parties. Used to make jokes about Fletch. They always began with, ‘Where’s Fletch?’ and then someone would make up something ridiculous, like, ‘Sniffing the bicycle seats outside the girls’ dorms.…’ ”

“Come on. Finish your drink. Let’s go to lunch.”

“Hey, Bob. We’re supposed to be journalists, aren’t we? Journalists live it up. I saw a movie once.…”